The Sky Walkers
by Virodeil
Summary: Bail Organa Confessed. And from that moment on, everything changed.
1. Uprooted

The Sky Walkers  
By Rey  
 _(Beta-read by Malicean)_

Bail Organa confessed. And from that moment on, everything changed.

Story Notes:  
1\. This story is almost totally AU; too much has changed with just one thing. Plus, there are also facts and character relationships that I tweak for various purposes and reasons.  
2. Thank you very much for Malicean for beta-reading this story. But all mistakes that you see here are my own, not hers.  
3. Further warnings: major character death in the first chapter, maybe one or two or three more much later on, and touchy, controversial themes like slavery, empire vs republic, right and wrong, Jedi and Sith and the one in between, mind rape, and a few other things in the rest of the story. I felt it would be prudent too to warn readers that this author knows only a puny amount of Star Wars and not so much of English, despite the patient help of her patient beta-reader…  
4. Critiques, ideas, flames, comments: All are welcome; ideas, especially, as this is a rather loose story once we get nearer to the middle, and the owner(s) of those ideas will certainly get a mention here, or even more. I'm relying on you all to rant and rave at me for the bumps. And again, all mistakes are mine, not my beta-reader's! So, here we go…

Story Tags: Childfic, Character Study, Family Drama, Family Fluff, Friendship, Hurt/Comfort, Mystery, Sensitive Topics, Grey Areas

Chapter Warning: Major character death.

1\. Uprooted

The royal bedchamber smelled of illness.

It was nothing new to Leia Organa, ever since somebody had slipped a poison into her father's wine in the evening three days ago, to which a part of her had shrieked at her in warning but too late. It was sheer luck that had saved her from the same fate; or rather, it had been her father's unshakable rule about never allowing her alcohol before the age of fifteen that had spared her life in that rare private dinner of father and daughter.

Ever since that fateful evening, she had rarely left her father's bedside.

But since yesterday evening, she had been finding it hard to look upon her father.

Because the best doctors, discreetly drawn from all over Alderaan and even off the system altogether, had at last proclaimed her father as a lost cause yesterday evening.

The poison was a rare type from one of the outer-rim worlds, they had said. The poison had no known antidote and concocting one was impossible within the timeframe, they had said. Her father only had a further twenty-four hours to live, they had said.

Leia could only stand silently before them for a long time.

And then she had fled right to her rooms, to her bed, locking the door behind her and ordering Threepio, her friend and personal protocol droid, to prop her writing desk up against it to boot.

That night, her pillow had been soaked with bitter tears. That night, she had kept vigil alone in her own rooms, too terrified to face her father, to face the truth. And in the end of that night, she had fallen into the same nightmare that had often plagued her in her early childhood, and even sometimes afterwards, one that she could never properly describe to anybody, nor ignore entirely.

There had been four presences: two stronger and two weaker, interlinked in a most intimate manner, always, in that dream that she was never sure wasn't a memory. One stronger presence turned muddy, withdrawn but never gone, forsaken and then forsaking, but the others…

She and one other had been with the other stronger presence for the longest while, always interlocked, even through the near-separation with the now-muddy one. But then the link to the now-muddy one was yanked and severed, quickly followed by the other stronger presence, and the other.

Four had howled in agony.

And then she was alone, terrifyingly alone, while there had been three others with her, _always_ three, however faint, however muddy.

And now, she was going to be left alone _again_ , undeniably for real this time, as her mother had passed away while she had only been three years old, as she had never been close to her other relatives, and as Winter, her best friend, had been more inclined, more comfortable to serving her as a secretary or a maid or a friend than a sister.

But she could not avoid it, fight against it, just like she had never managed to keep all the links that had sustained her existence in all repetitions of the nightmare, just like she had never managed to fully suppressed any reoccurrences of the said nightmare, nor the part of her it had originated from.

She could not avoid seeing her father for the last time too, and partly she indeed did not wish so.

Bail Organa had been a robust man, quick with a sunny smile, more apt to frowning in thought than anger. Bail Organa had been a great charismatic leader, quite a doting father, a strong person with hopes for a better future for the galaxy.

But now, Bail Organa was only a thin frail man laid near the edge of a too-large bed, aged decades in three days.

"Papa," she whispered, but he didn't look at her.

"Papa." She didn't know what else to say. But she couldn't just say nothing. Maybe her father would find a new purpose to fight for his life if she continued speaking? Twelve was a far-too-young age to lose everyone!

"Papa." Her voice warbled with tears now, but she couldn't prevent it.

She didn't want to.

"Don't go." The words escaped her lips at last, soft and fragile. She felt five, she felt fifty, all at once.

And their eyes met, at last.

His smile was just as fragile as her words had been, no longer sunny, and she could see no hope in his eyes, nothing of the fire that had made him secretly supplying things and information for the rebellion for years, or so she had suspected.

And then at last, for the first time since he had fallen to the wooden floor of their dining balcony with violent spasms three days ago, he spoke to her, in a voice weak and scratchy with disuse and pain.

"Leia, I… have something to tell you."

Invisible, brutal hands squeezed at her heart.

"Tell what, Papa?" she croaked, falling to her knees at the bedside at last, staring into the dim, clouded brown eyes, so alike yet so unlike her own, from only centimetres away.

The fragile smile was back. "Everything," he whispered, and now there was a mixture between peace and pain in his half-focused gaze, one bizarre blending that she had never thought possible.

"You never kept a secret from me," she insisted, baffled and distressed, even more than before. It wasn't quite true in some respects, but she wasn't about to let her father expend his breaths for story-telling!

The fragile smile turned bitter, as bitter as her tears had been yesterday night.

"Too many, Leia," came the whisper, and now the peace in those familiar eyes was completely chased away by pain, pain and regrets from years long gone.

But before she could insist otherwise, he spoke again.

And her world collapsed all round her, just as something _clicked_ in her mind, and a strange current of energy, warm and cool and rushing and soaking, numbed every particle of her being.

She had been adopted through illegal means hours after she had been born, he told her. A friend of his had brought her to Alderaan in haste, in secrecy, and there had been another baby with her, a boy, her _twin_ brother. He had offered – no, _insisted_ – to adopt both of them, as her birth mother had been a dear friend also and he had felt that separating a pair of twins was wrong, but the friend had refused adamantly, and he had never found out where the friend and her brother had vanished to afterwards. The friend had used public transport, leaving the  *(1)Nubian starship he had arrived in stowed away in the palace's hangar, and also the sad news that the twins' mother had died shortly after childbirth.

He never told her who "the friend" was, though he did tell her who her mother was, Padmé Naberrie, and warned her not to share the name lightly with anyone, as he suspected that one of her many political rivals had murdered her, in spite of what the friend had said.

The necklace with a wooden carved pendant that he had given her at her twelfth birthday months ago, it was a keepsake left from her birth mother, he said, entrusted to him alongside her. It was her inheritance, aside from the very blood humming in her veins, the knack for politics, her features, her smile and the determination in her eyes, See-Threepio, Artoo-Deetoo, the Nubian ship, and her name alongside that of her brother's – Leia and Luke.

But still, she didn't even know who her father was. Her father – her _adoptive_ father – didn't know either, he said.

Worse, she _knew_ that he was telling the truth, with nothing else hidden away, save the name of his baby-bringing, baby-separating friend.

And then, exhausted by the confession but in peace once more, with a last – entirely truthful and fervent – declaration of love to her, Bail Organa closed his eyes for the last time.

There was not even a brief mention – let alone a demand – that she be the queen of Alderaan, to bind the star system together as it had always been done, as her adoptive mother had done till her untimely death years ago.

Bail Organa, the only father that she knew, had freed her from _all_ entanglements for reasons he alone knew. It was a prospect far more fearsome than combing the galaxy in search of an unknown brother while being the child-queen to a star-system in the core of the said galaxy.

She feared it, because it uprooted her completely, made her meaningless in her own eyes, made her entire short life a huge lie.

But indeed, what – and _whom_ – did she have now?

Numb with the realisation and stifled by the unnamed fear, in body and mind, and buoyed and laden with the strange new sensation that had just been released in her no less, she fled, again.

End Notes:  
Footnote: *(1) "Naboo" feels and sounds too weird as the adjective, despite it featuring on canon. I would prefer "Nubian" to describe "of/from Naboo."  
Credits: A nod to Kungfu Jedi's story, _The Pendant_ , for the reference of the japor snippet given to Leia on her twelfth birthday. The bit about Breha Organa passing away when Leia was three, and also that of "the friend" bringing the twins to Alderaan, were inspired by yet another story (or maybe two separate stories), but I've forgotten the title(s) and author(s). Please inform me if you are the author(s) or know about the aforementioned story(ies).  
AU points: I'm going against the films here by having the droids in Leia's possession and without the memory wipe, and that Leia never knew that she was adopted, and the sequence of events leading to Leia's adoption. Bail was a little more sentimental here, and a little more cautious in that he didn't let Leia be a figurehead in her childhood. I always suspect it's her, not her adoptive father or mother, that persisted with stubborn determination to be a senator …  
Argument: I know that Bail wasn't supposed to regret his actions those years ago, feeling that Leia was safer not knowing that she was adopted, that she had a twin brother even. But in this, as his life was cut out so suddenly and somewhat unexpectedly, leaving her so young and orphaned and possibly threatened from a similar death (or worse), he changed his mind, especially since in this story Winter Retrac didn't act as Leia's adopted sister, just a very good friend.


	2. Duty

The Sky Walkers  
By Rey  
 _(Beta-read by Malicean)_

2\. Duty

Mourners paid their respect to her father – no, her _adoptive_ father – _no_ , her _father_ – day and night. Leia received them with automatic, hollow grace, standing beside the open coffin where he was lain in state: just another statue, or maybe a living corpse. Her eyes were open wide, though half unseeing, and there was a small blank smile affixed to her lips.

She smiled like her birth mother, he had said in his long confession, wide and joyous and sincere and totally free.

The facsimile of _that_ smile never left, not until Winter guided her away from the Hall of Mourning, not until she had been bathed and coaxed into pyjamas and tucked into bed, like a girl a decade younger than she was.

And then, as they did every night after she had pretended to everyone that she was all right, the tears and desperation came crashing down in the privacy of her bedroom shortly after Winter was gone, witnessed only by her two droids.

She didn't know how long she had been doing this. Time no longer mattered to her; nothing did. She did everything like a well-oiled machine now, worse than Threepio, her droid friend and personal caretaker, worse even than Artoo whose language was incomprehensible to most people.

She didn't even talk, nowadays, aside from meaningless whispers of words that she was expected to say.

Her closest human caretakers were worried about her, she could _feel_ it. But they were even more worried about the future state of the world, left in her near-catatonic hands, she _knew_ it. There was just too much love and respect between them for those few powerful men and women to stage a coup, she thought.

But for now, she couldn't care less about any of it.

The only _people_ who likewise didn't care about Alderaan were Threepio and Artoo; no _Princess_ Leia for _them_ , just a twelve-year-old girl called Leia, now truly orphaned.

 _Droids_ , remnants from her _birth_ mother, protecting her, also remnant of the same woman.

They were a trio of misfits, together wherever she was needed, wherever she was wanted.

Nowadays, she never went anywhere because _she_ needed, because _she_ wanted. Life now consisted only of people's expectations, of scrambling for a semblance of routine normalcy like a hand trying to grab at water.

Life was hollow, like she was.

And then, one night, Threepio and Artoo cornered her, just before she slipped under her blankets.

"Mistress Leia, is there perchance something that Artoo and I could do to help you?" Threepio began in his prim and proper way as per usual, though she could detect a cautious note in it.

"Nothing. Thanks, you two," she mumbled, as always, ever since her world had figuratively vanished from under her feet, before her hand just as automatically reached out for the light button on her bedside table.

But Artoo was quicker.

Her blindly flailing hand met only his manipulator claw.

"Artoo," she whined.

"Might we talk to you for a little while, then, Mistress Leia?" Threepio continued, sounding more cautious, more hesitant.

She gave up. She could rarely deny them their wishes, especially now that she knew they were once her mother's.

 _Her mother's…_

She sat up straight on the edge of the bed, gasping, wide-eyed. Her heart thumped quicker, harder, carrying the current of energy that had shocked her into numbness days ago to all parts of her body. _Her mother!_ They could tell her about _her mother_ , if their memories had not been wiped.

And there was only one way to find out.

"Could you tell me about my mother, please?" Her voice was tremulous, and her face must have blanched, but she didn't care. She needn't pretend to these two droids, to her closest friends.

"I know little of Queen Breha, Mistress Leia," Threepio answered quickly. Leia had to stifle a hysterical laughter on that. Queen Breha, of course. Neither Threepio nor Artoo had been informed that she had been adopted, had they? Just like the rest of Alderaan…

But there was still that cautious note in his voice… He wouldn't be so hesitant if he were reciting facts, would he?

"Not Queen Breha, Threepio," she murmured at last, meeting the droid's luminous eyes dead on. "Padmé Naberrie. What can you and Artoo tell me about her? Or about my _real_ father, for that matter?"

She transferred her gaze to Artoo, timidly hopeful, just in time to witness the squat droid wobbled back and forth on his rollers, waving his manipulator claw centimetres above the floor, looking almost like an agitated or undecided human.

"Artoo." Her eyes narrowed. The cloud of grief and confusion that had been gripping her thinned, chased away by suspicion, which led to a mounting anger.

"So the both of you knew?" She gripped her bedsheets, not wanting to explode now, not wanting to do something that she _might_ regret later.

"Erh… Mistress Leia, we… that is…" Threepio stuttered. Beside him but trying to edge away surreptitiously it seemed, Artoo crooned a long, low sound, as if coaxing or pleading.

Leia stood up. All of her muscles were taut with repressed fury, as her suspicions seemed to be confirmed, and for now her grief and confusion were truly set aside.

The two droids, one of whom was taller than her by almost half a metre and the other nearly as tall as she was, backed away hastily.

"M-Master Bail Organa, Mistress Leia," Threepio whimpered, just as Artoo let out a binary shriek which could be interpreted as either warning or worry. "H-he has forbidden us to tell you, Mistress Leia. P-please don't de-a-activate us, oh please."

The answer frustrated her, stoking her fury further, impotent as it was. "Master Bail Organa is _dead_!" she snapped.

A split second afterwards, as her brain registered what she had just said, filtered past layers of anger, she recoiled both physically and inwardly.

The fury dissipated just as swiftly as it had come, as she crumpled on the carpeted floor beside her bed, sobbing into her hands.

Whoever Bail Organa was – had been – _no_ , _was_ – to her, whatever he had done to her in keeping her full identity away from her, he had been her father for twelve years, and died loving her, leaving her with no secret kept, nothing that pertained closely to her anyway.

And now he was gone forever, and she had just spat rudely at his memory, despite all that he had done _for_ her, even on his deathbed.

Cool metal fingers gingerly touched her shoulder. "Mistress Leia? Are you all right?"

A clearly-worried croon sounded nearby, just as the front of a just-as-familiar structure bumped gently against her back.

See-Threepio and Artoo-Deetoo.

Threepio had been frightened of _her_ , but now he tried to _comfort_ her, risking the dreaded presumed deactivation with how close he was to her now just to do so. Artoo hadn't seemed to want to tell her anything either, but now…

A hollow laugh tore out of her lips, muffled by her hands, as her tears continued to drench her cheeks. "I am far from all right, Threepio. But thank you. Thank you for… for being my friends, even now."

The metal fingers patted gently at her shoulder. A manipulator claw did the same to her back.

"Do not imitate me, Artoo-Deetoo," she could hear Threepio scold his friend primly. "Use your own initiative, if you ever have one."

A rude splat was the answer, but the manipulator claw did change its contact with her back, now caressing her nightgown-covered skin as tenderly as a metal construct not meant for such a deed could do so.

The tears fell harder, as her heart squeezed with overwhelming love for them: two droids – not even humans – who never left her, never failed to try to comfort her. Protocol droids and astromechs were never programmed for such a thing, she knew that; but whatever her birth mother or father had done to them so that they could do so, she was grateful for it.

 _Her birth parents…_

"Tell me about my birth mother, please," she requested tiredly, though her hands never left her face, and she didn't move even a millimetre away from her spot on the rug. "And who is my birth father? You must have known about him; his name, at least, or even his face. Please, Threepio, Artoo, I _need_ to know. Papa is no longer here, and it's him who told me that he isn't my birth father anyway. Please, I _must_ know."

Both metal limbs froze, before retracting slowly away from her. Her heart sank when a long moment passed in silence, with the two droids giving neither a verbal nor a gestural answer. They must have been programmed not to answer. Someone must have put a password on their memory banks so that they could tell nobody about the two subjects she wanted to know the most.

But at last, just as she was giving up her quest, at least for tonight, Threepio spoke up, sounding just as near as before, but firmer, fact-citing, pre-programmed. "Master Anakin stored many things in me and Artoo so that he could show them to his *(1)child later. We can show you something of his and Mistress Padmé on your holoprojector if you would like, Mistress Leia, as you are his child, and we have been passworded for such occasion. There could be many more things of theirs on Mistress Padmé's ship, but I would suggest that we visit it tomorrow instead of tonight, Mistress Leia, the guards would not be pleased with me if–"

But Leia had already sprung to her feet and scrambled unsteadily towards the large holoprojector set on the wall opposite her bed, ignoring Threepio's familiar prattle, soon joined with Artoo's beeping. Her heart swelled with excitement and trepidation. _At last!_ But was she ready for this?

Her finger wavered on the power button of the holoprojector. But then the droids sidled up to her, and it was too late to back down.

And in the end, she was glad that she hadn't backed down.

The large screen went alive when Artoo had plugged himself into its socket. A brown-haired, brown-eyed woman in casual summer clothes, perched elegantly on the side-edge of a quickly-approaching small boat, smiled playfully at a blond-haired, blue-eyed man in dark-brown robes smirking boyishly back at her from his awkward post on the opposite side.

"Mistress Padmé and Master Anakin, Mistress Leia," Threepio informed her solemnly, though, uncharacteristically, didn't elaborate further, as though he were aware that her focus was entirely on the screen, and no word was enough to describe his previous two owners.

And she did drink in the scene, greedily.

When she at last indicated, reluctantly, for the screen to be changed, Artoo showed the man tinkering with what looked like the cockpit of a starcraft with an easy grace, occasionally smiling at the woman standing behind him and watching his progress curiously.

"Padmé Naberrie, and Anakin Skywalker, my 'Master Ani'," he twittered, adding helpfully, "when he at last got her permission to tinker with her personal starship," before Threepio could say anything.

Her birth mother and birth father, they said at last, a Nubian and a Tatooinian, rarely together but rarely apart when together, wherever they happened to be at that time.

"Artoo said these images might help you find your parents, since now neither Master Bail nor Mistress Breha are here anymore. He misses Master Ani, he said," Threepio supplied afterwards, giving her an insight to the two droids' previous debate just before they had shown her the images. "I miss Mistress Padmé and Master Ani too, Mistress Leia. However, I cannot say how mere images could help, really." Then, as in other times, he degenerated to chiding his booing squat friend. "Oh, stop your smug chattering, you overweight glob of grease. You don't help Mistress Leia at all with that attitude."

Her laughter now, although still weak and croaky, was far more genuine than before.

"We shall," she promised simply. But indeed, what could she offer otherwise? And the three of them needed no elaborate words to express the same desire, anyhow.

The two droids stood at either side of the bed as she climbed under her blankets for real now, like they had done ever since her earliest memory. But now her perception of them was changed, just as her world had been these few days.

They were there, in lieu of her parents. And as paltry as the substitution was, she was grateful for it, for them. They were droids, but they were _her parents'_ , and _hers_ , and _her brother's_ , _only_ theirs.

And now, she had a purpose once more.

After all, she and her brother had never been together, but they would not be kept apart again once she found him, just like their parents had been. And then Padmé Naberrie and Anakin Skywalker wouldn't have to be separated too, and the four of them would be a family at last.

But Bail Organa, the only father that she had known for twelve years, had never been unkind to her. She was never one to shirk her duties as well, and this time it was literally the size of a planet, and then some. She would do the duties that the people asked of her to some extent, and she would never leave them alone, as she knew how abandonment felt like, all too keenly.

She just had more visceral duties elsewhere for now.

Her birth parents would understand the need to return to lead Alderaan, then, she was sure, especially her mother, as she remembered her mother's face from her lessons about the Republican Senate, tagged to the name "Senator Amidala." She would simply have to fit her brother in a position somewhere after they were reunited, or maybe they could go back and forth between worlds, experiencing the galaxy in full while learning and growing up and being a family…

She fell asleep with a real smile, the first in a few days, as if a toddler lulled into sweet dreams by bizarre-but-happy stories told by her parents.

Leia Organa fell into a deep, contented slumber in her own bed in her own rooms in the palace in Aldera for the last time. As the sun rose the next morning, Leia Skywalker rose with it, ready to go hunting for three severed ties, armed only with three names and a tenacious determination.

After all, it was her duty too, but now _only_ to herself.

End Notes:  
Footnote: *(1) Anakin hadn't known that Padmé had been carrying twins, after all, so he had prepared for only one.  
Credit: Thank you, PandaApprovedxx, for informing me about several spelling mistakes in this chapter on its first draft! Highly appreciated, and the mistakes were already corrected in the second one, before this third version.  
AU point: Just a reminder: Threepio and Artoo here have always been Leia's. And in this story, Leia, for lack of a pseudo sibling or a real one, and having just one best friend, got quite close to Threepio and Artoo. In my mind, Leia is much more like Anakin in personality, and Anakin had only a handful of close friends, one of whom was his wife.  
Author's note: Before you point your blaster cannons at me: No, the end of this chapter isn't what you might think it is, if judging from the hint alone.


	3. Unplanned, Part 1

The Sky Walkers  
By Rey  
 _(Beta-read by Malicean)_

3\. Unplanned, Part 1

Seeing the closed coffin bearing Bail Organa's body being covered slowly but steadily by humble earth drove home the horrible, undeniable fact that he was _dead_ and Leia was _alone_. Witnessing the funeral procession till the end was meant to give her closure, but what a painful chill it was to see first her adoptive father's body disappear under the lid of the coffin, then to see the said coffin covered forever by dirt! And worse…

"Winter, please…"

…She could not even act on her plan to visit her birth mother's starship afterwards, to ease the terrible, cold, hollow feeling in her chest, to remind her tangibly that her birth family members were just separated from her, not lost forever like her adopted ones. Neither the pleas nor the pleading looks worked against a determined Winter Retrac, unfortunately. And indeed, the older girl kept firm with her opinion that Leia's safety would be compromised from overexposure to even the palace hangars in such a fragile situation, in addition to the improperness of a future head of state visiting the hangars for a perceived pleasure after burying the late head of state.

Even worse, now Winter insisted on camping in her quarters, claiming that Leia ought not to be alone in such a delicate and uncertain time, and Captain Antilles – head of the Royal Household Security – agreed with her.

Not that Leia didn't appreciate the gesture… but those particular rooms had belonged _only_ to her and her two droids, ever since her earliest memory with the Organas, and neither of her adoptive parents had sought to change it in their lifetimes. It wasn't about to change now, then, Leia decided, not even for such a close friend, especially since it was the only remaining personal touch to her life that her adoptive parents had left her. So she relocated to a set of smaller, simpler living quarters in the less-used parts of the guest wing, consisting of only two bedrooms, a bathroom and a sitting room, claiming to Winter and the palace staff with all the guiles that she could muster that anonymity was best for her security right now.

 _Thankfully_ , they believed her, agreed with her whole-heartedly.

Now, if only they would leave her alone for just _one_ hour!

"Artoo, do you think you can create a distraction for me? Just enough for me to run to Mother's ship?" the frustrated, nearly-in-tears twelve-year-old begged at the squat droid one night in the privacy of her new bedroom, just after her latest bid for the hangars, via the window and the leafy tree outside of it, had been thwarted by a discreet-but-all-too-loyal palace guard hidden among the flowery bushes under the said tree. Then, on second thought, she amended, "But you're an astromech… You can get me to the ship faster than if I do it alone, right? So can you do it instead, Threepio?"

It had been two days after she had laid her adoptive father to rest beside the tomb of her adoptive mother, and she didn't wish to wait _any longer_ for what was _her right_.

The addressed golden-plated droid, shifting from foot to foot, begged right back, "But Mistress Leia, Captain Antilles is going to scrap me once he realises you are not there and I was meant to distract him. Besides, I am a protocol droid, not a battle droid, Mistress Leia. Oh please, don't send me out to face the blasters alone!"

A rude, mocking string of splats and tweets spewed forth from Artoo, to which his counterpart chid indignantly, complete with crossed arms, "You try that yourself, _Ar-Too-Dee-Too_ , see if I will save you then. I assure you, I will not! And then you will not be of use to Mistress Leia anymore. See what Master Ani or Mistress Padmé will think of you then, if we ever see them again!"

And with that, as per usual, the two droids fell back into their old routine of verbal sparring.

A tired, bitter smile twitched on Leia's lips on watching their antics, then she buried her face in her hands and groaned. The names of her birth parents just spiked up her longing for the starship, for access to what had been denied to her for twelve years. The feelings had transformed into a deep ache in her bones by now, seeping into somewhere in her chest and constricting it, and she could do _nothing_ about it. Not the words, not the tree-creeping, not even the latest appeal to her two droids' sense of adventure had made a difference. All she got for tonight's efforts were only a mounting frustration, a rumpled nightgown, and tiny leaves and twigs stuck in her thick wavy hair.

In such a mood, it was not surprising that she did not answer the hesitant knocking on the door, although her droid companions instantly fell silent mid-argument.

One blue eye and a patch of white hair peeked in when two more series of knocks were not answered. Leia glared at them.

Winter, however, quite accustomed to Leia's moods, didn't react to it. Half of the face soon became an apologetic whole, then the owner came in, closing the door behind her.

"Why do you want to go to the hangars so much, Leia?" No apologies for the bother she knew and indeed intended to make, no mincing her way into the matter even though she must know that it could trigger Leia's brittle temper. For one with such a lady-like bearing, Winter could be quite blunt and business-like. It was why she had managed to be Leia's friend for so long while other, much more unbendingly genteel girls had failed miserably, and it was why she was safe from bearing the brunt of Leia's mood at the meantime.

Still, Leia wasn't about to disclose her family secrets to her, maybe not yet. She wasn't sure if her adoptive parents had ever told anybody about the adoption, or if anybody else had known about it from direct participation, or even if the adoption had been done legally. She would risk it becoming general knowledge should she fish for information now, and somehow she got the feeling that such a disclosure would be bad indeed for her continued safety. Distraction, then…

"Did the team uncover yet who poisoned my father?"

Somehow, it felt wrong now, to call Bail Organa her father, but it was just a mild discomfort, dwarfed by the gaping hole left by his sudden, violent departure.

Winter must be able to clearly see the distraction for what it was, since her eyebrows rose up nearly to her fringes. Still, the older girl did oblige her, to Leia's relief and gratitude.

"They're trying their best, you know that. The leads are still too few to narrow down the list of suspects." A drawn-out sigh: exhausted, worried, frustrated. "I'm tempted to just squirrel you away to Delaya or even some unheard-of planet in the Rim until this case is concluded satisfactorily. We have to make sure that it won't happen again."

The girls mirrored each other in bearing, though not in height and colouring: sitting side-by-side on the edge of the bed, with eyes downcast and hunched shoulders. But inside, a plan began to form in Leia's mind, sparked by Winter's rambling. How upset would Winter be, if she knew that her fretful speculations created what she usually called a "mad idea unbefitting a princess"…

But how glorious it would be, to sit in the cockpit of her mother's ship, to steer her birthright legacy in space wherever she wanted to go… She'd install the Royal Council and Winter as her representatives first, maybe in a few months, after this horrible case had been solved. Afterwards she'd go on a mission to collect her brother and parents, then they'd explore the galaxy together for a while. No royal protocols to dictate her life, at least for some time…

"Leia?"

"Hmm?"

"Did you listen to what I said? Any of it?"

"Uh?"

Winter let out a put-upon sigh, sounding disturbingly like Threepio, who was now semi-hidden in a far corner together with Artoo.

"Sorry," Leia offered. "What did you say?" Better deflect Winter's attention further, better the older girl didn't know what was in the hangars that was so special to her, and maybe…

"I said–"

But whatever Winter was about to repeat, exasperatedly but fondly, it was drowned when somebody jerked open the front door, ran to the direction of the bedroom they were occupying at the moment, then gave three sharp, rapid knocks to the closed door before jerking it open.

In a flash, the two droids stood in the middle of the room, Winter pushed Leia under the bed, and she herself straightened up to face the intruder.

"Where is Princess Leia, Winter?" It was Captain Antilles, but worried, almost panicked, far from his usual composed self.

Leia bit at her lip. A frisson of apprehension ran up and down her spine, quickly turning into anxiety. What had happened in the intervening time since his last report before dinner? If even the unruffled captain could turn _this_ visibly afraid…

She frowned. The urge to burrow deeper under the bed battled with the pull of morbid curiosity and the thirst for information.

The latter won, in the end.

Thankfully, Winter's stoic, "Somewhere, Captain," masked the slight rustling of her night-gown while she inched closer to the edge of the bed-frame to hear better.

But then she froze, as the captain continued hurriedly, almost _desperately_ , "I must speak to her, Winter. This is urgent. Vader is going to be here in an hour, and he seemed far angrier than usual. He wants _Leia_ , Winter, for whatever nefarious reason. I already tried to tell him that she is currently not in a good state to meet with him, that she is in mourning, but he insisted. We must hide her until he's gone. You can pretend to be the Princess for a while, can't you? Traffic out of the planet will be watched, but we can put Leia in one of the more rarely used hangars that she's been wanting to visit these couple of days. He'll be using the main landing platform, so it's far away. It'll be safe enough."

Tension bled away from her, and a thoughtful frown replaced it.

Vader, _just_ Lord Vader, though an angry Lord Vader somehow. No invading mercenaries from off world, no threat of riots or coup d'état, just an unscheduled visit from the Emperor's second-in-command. Captain Antilles just broke down because of all the stress then, truly.

But…

"But _why_?" Winter cried out, baffled and distressed. "This doesn't make sense! The Empire never paid this much attention on Alderaan. We've got  *(1) _nothing_ to hide from them! And if they just wanted to pay their respects, why didn't he come sooner, while the Prince was lying in state?"

… _Why_ did Winter have to follow his lead into semi-hysteria? She should know better! She wasn't as hard-pressed as Captain Antilles in this chaotic time, after all, given how she rarely left Leia's side, and how Leia in turn was kept out of the immediate loop of the investigation. Vader was a force to be reckoned with, but he wasn't a mindless slaughterer, especially when there was neither cause nor reason for it, she was sure. Those tales were just exaggerated to scare people… right?

Peeking an eye out from in-between the hangings down the bedside, Leia now felt more curious, bemused and vexed than anything else. Why such an interest from the Emperor's right-hand man, indeed? Why her, _specifically_? What did he want with _her_? Lord Thevn of House Alde, her adoptive father's elder cousin and the head of House Alde, was the acting First Chairman, after all. A personage of his station and experience ought to have been sufficient for a state meeting with Lord Vader, right?

But _Lord_ Vader wasn't just a lord, was he…?

Did the Empire wish to impose _military_ rule on Alderaan, then, given how Lord Vader was _the Supreme Commander of the Imperial Forces_? It was a chilling prospect indeed. But for what purpose? Although Leia herself had sniffed some rebelling tendencies on the palace's staff, and even on her own adoptive father, they were not rebels and thus not a threat to the Empire.

She was confused.

She needed _answers_. Why and in what capacity did Lord Vader visit Alderaan?

Cowering in a deserted corner like Captain Antilles and Winter expected her to wouldn't get her the answers though.

So she crawled out from under the bed …

… And in one swooping motion, the cold wooden floor was replaced by Captain Antilles' arms, before the man, with his precious burden of squirming, yelling charge, just as suddenly sprinted out of the bedroom, then out of her quarters, then out of the guest wing, then through various hallways to wherever Leia didn't know.

Her only comfort was that her faithful companions, See-Threepio and Artoo-Deetoo, came streaking right after him, yelling – beeping, in Artoo's case – just as frantically.

End Notes:  
Footnote: *(1) In this story, Winter, slated more as a companion, handmaiden and decoy than a rebel operative, knew almost just as little as Leia about the rebellious tendencies of their compatriots.  
AU points: There are changes to the family tree of Alderaan's monarchy in this story, as you might have glimpsed in this chapter, and it will be more apparent later on. Being unexposed to the rebellion and its doctrines yet, to an extent, given the premature demise of Bail Organa, Leia's worldview would be much more naive too… until reality slapped her in the face, that was.  
Author's Note: If you're wondering why Vader was so angry and hunted especially for Leia, remember Chapter 1 and Leia's response to Bail's revelation. Nine days were quite a long time for an _in_ famously-impatient Sith Lord to wait to hunt down a Force-Sensitive child…


	4. Unplanned, Part 2

The Sky Walkers  
By Rey  
 _(Beta-read by Malicean)_

Chapter Warning: Recitation à la Threepio half-way through the chapter, about the horrors leading to, on, and after (by implication) Mustafar.

4\. Unplanned, Part 2

"Princess, _please_ , calm down."

It was ironic, Leia thought, that now Captain Antilles was the one doing the begging, after two days of ignoring her various and heartfelt pleas to visit her mother's starship. And it was even more ironic, bitterly so, that they were now secluded in the very hangar that she had wanted to visit.

Unfortunately, the captain was headed to a small unassuming speeder tucked into an easily-overlooked corner instead of a spaceship; and even more unfortunately, Leia didn't know which of the numerous forlorn-looking ships she spied over his broad shoulder was the one that belonged to her birth mother.

"Where are we going? Why are we here? We are supposed to welcome Lord Vader in an hour! Why are you bringing me here?" she demanded for the umpteenth time from her highly reluctant perch in the captain's arms. But she did tone down the volume of her voice, unnerved by the eerie echoes amidst all the silent hulking bulks of the various vehicles.

Alas, as he had time and time again, Captain Antilles only gave her a harassed, exasperated look, and repeated his fervent plea. "Please, Princess, be quiet, and stay here. Flee Aldera later, should the situation gets out of hand, but first, _please,_ be quiet and stay here."

Leia mirrored the look now, knowing that her time and chance were nearly up. "Captain, have you at least informed Lord Thevn and asked him to stand in for me?" she asked, trying for a middle ground, though she still didn't understand why she couldn't receive Darth Vader himself as he'd requested. She attempted to wriggle away meanwhile, as the captain was wrestling her into the front seat.

But both efforts were firmly and silently foiled by the tight-faced man.

He addressed the oncoming Threepio and Artoo instead, ignoring her glare and also her various attempts to dislodge herself from the seat. "Now, See-Threepio, you sit behind the Princess, and _be quiet_. And you, Artoo-Deetoo, you help the Princess steer the speeder if an escape is needed. _Keep her safe_ , both of you."

"Captain!" she snapped at last, frustrated, confused and irritated.

But his answer to her was only a bleak, frightened look. He was frightened, but not for himself; not yet, it seemed, until she was secure and far away from Darth Vader.

And just so, her mounting anger evaporated, leaving a horrible empty feeling in her chest.

He was _truly_ , _sincerely_ trying to protect her from something terrible.

But what was horrible about a visit from Lord Vader? All right, he was angry, but Leia was sure he would not be so anymore once his objective of seeing her was realised.

So, she told the captain just that, ignoring Threepio and Artoo who were installing themselves in their assigned slots. All the arts of argumentative persuasion that she possessed, and those extras that she had been taught by her tutors, were unleashed in the few words she allowed herself before they had to return to the palace proper.

There must have been something horrible in her gaze or demeanour though, for the tall man, nearly twice her height and width, looked away from her with a stricken expression, his composure cracking even further.

But for now Leia didn't care, even if her heart cringed with guilt and further confusion. She was getting through to him. She must push her advantage and return to the palace proper. She'd hopefully be in time to welcome Darth Vader formally on Alderaan, and thus prevent a political disaster that even a twelve-year-old could see coming. "I–"

But she didn't have the chance to finish her words. In just a split second, one large hand touched the side of her head in farewell, accompanied by an apologetic yet determined look on the captain's face, before the canopy slammed shut all round her. Not a moment afterwards, she could faintly hear the captain running _away_ from her, from the deserted hangar, right into the dangerous subterfuge that his mind had concocted.

The anger flared up again, almost greater than before.

Leia was tempted, oh so tempted, to try to punch a hole through the speeder window. If Artoo hadn't chosen that same time to offer her to visit her mother's ship, she would have done just that.

"No big organic being here except me, Artoo?" she confirmed cautiously, ignoring Threepio's complaint of "But Captain Antilles said…." Regardless of how desperately she longed to dash out of the speeder and right towards her mother's ship, she didn't want to be stuffed back into this crammed space again like a toddler on a temper tantrum, and Captain Antilles would do just that should he still be here when she enacted her plan.

"Good," she smirked when Artoo gave his word. Captain Antilles might have a plan, but she did too, and she wasn't about to let him or anybody else deter her. Her wrist chrono confirmed that the whole episode with the captain had only taken ten minutes, while Lord Vader was due to come in an hour. She could explore her mother's ship for thirty minutes with a five-minute margin for both getting there and back again, respectively, then she could use the last ten minutes to be there just in time to greet Lord Vader on the main landing platform using this convenient speeder, regardless of what Winter and Captain Antilles wished. Thirty minutes were short, especially since she had twelve years to make up, but for now she would take what she could get.

"Be silent, all right, Threepio?" she hissed at the tall golden droid seated in the lone passenger seat behind her, who – _thankfully_ – hadn't let out a peep during their brief forced stay in the speeder after his aborted complaint earlier.

"As you wish, Mistress Leia," the golden droid replied promptly, but then added, to her exasperation and irritation, "But what are we going to do now, Mistress Leia, if I might ask? Surely you are not going to think Artoo has a good idea? As I was trying to say before, Captain Antilles told us to–"

"See-Threepio?" she cut through his rambling, her tone purely saccharine, as the exasperation and irritation melded seamlessly and rose up to an alarming level, stoked by the remnants of her earlier bouts of anger.

"Yes, Mistress Leia?" The golden droid's reply was timid, a little bit alarmed. Maybe one of her parents had used such a tone with disastrous result for the wordy clunker? ` _Later, later…_ `

"I have a blaster here," she continued in the same falsely-cheerful tone. And she did, as Artoo had just fished it out from somewhere in the surprisingly-large dashboard locker of the tiny speeder and handed it to her: small and old, but hopefully serviceable.

"Yes, Mistress Leia?" Maybe none of her parents had ever threatened him with a blaster before, but Leia was all too aware that time was ticking away uncaring about her plight, and she was still held up here because of him. There was always a first time for everything, right?

"So, my old friend, if you are _not_ silent in this little mission and _help_ me to reach my mother's ship _without_ any complaint," she sang out, waving the blaster in front of the droid's face, "you'll have to pardon me for checking if this blaster is still good, with _you_ as the target."

It was remarkable, how fast the usually clumsy See-Threepio could dash out of the cramped speeder, and how silent he was, even when faced by Artoo-Deetoo's laughter and subsequent booing, right afterwards.

The silence was another matter entirely, however, when the three of them arrived at their destination: a smallish starship, armed it seemed, and painted with soft colours. Its ramp opened quietly, almost as quietly as their footfalls and rolling respectively had been.

Leia was vastly grateful when her two droid friends, despite her earlier threat to one of them, took her hands in theirs – or Artoo's approximation of one – as they ascended the ramp together, side-by-side.

It felt… surreal, and daunting. She wasn't sure if she could have faced the prospect of knowledge about her past if she were alone.

Threepio offered to take her to the main cabin immediately, saying that she might want to shut down and recharge for a while. But she would rather _not_ go there as long as she could stall it, suddenly too terrified of what she felt she would find there. So, by the guidance of the golden protocol droid and his blue-white astromech companion, she made her way to the cockpit, and seated herself on the remarkably comfortable and well preserved pilot seat. Threepio in turn seated himself on the copilot seat to her left, while Artoo parked himself between them, half hidden under the control panel.

It felt even more surreal now, like a déjà vu experience. Had this been how her mother had positioned herself and operated in the cockpit during her travels? Or maybe her father had been the pilot, ferrying her mother here and there as needed or wished? Was that how they had met for the first time, how they had fallen in love maybe, even?

Her breath hitched, and her hands curled up again into fists on her lap. She wanted – no, _needed_ – to know more, to know about her mother's life more than her name and the  *(1)vague notion that she had once been a senator, but at the same time she was terrified of what she was going to find.

Because _something_ whispered to her that the past that had led her into her adoptive parents' arms had been far from her wildest imagination, far _worse_.

But she wasn't here just to shy away from what she had been trying relentlessly for two days to find out, right?

"Artoo, Threepio, do you know if my parents left anything in this ship? And what's its type anyway?" She hated how her voice trembled, but she couldn't help it. Speaking alone had already been a concerted effort between sheer determination and desperation right now.

The string of numbers and letters that Artoo showed on the screen meant almost nothing to her, save that the ship was of Nubian origin. The description that he supplied afterwards via a written remark on the same screen, " **It is a yacht modified to serve in a limited offensive and defensive capacity, one that Mistress Padmé used most often during her travels,** ***(2)** **last named** _ **Luléa**_ ," was more of interest to her. Still, right now she was too impatient for that, and yearning about something more tangible.

Why must her mother, a senator, have dealt with anything "offensive and defensive," anyway? It didn't fit the role of a senator in what she knew thus far.

Ironically enough, it was Threepio who provided her with a more satisfactory answer, though quite a horrifying one both on itself and by implication, after he had gained her permission to talk once more without jeopardising his existence with the blaster lying forgotten on her lap.

"Mistress Padmé heard from Master Obi-Wan that Master Ani killed all the Jedi in the Temple, Mistress Leia, so she thought to ask him if it was true, then run away with him and raise their child in a secluded system if it was true. I helped her pack everything discreetly and put her belongings here. Then I helped her to travel to the planet Mustafar, to meet with Master Ani. It was such a surprise to my circuits that Master Obi-Wan turned out to have boarded this ship too! And then Master Ani, oh Mistress Leia, it was so horrible! He was so angry. He thought Mistress Padmé knew that Master Obi-Wan came with us, then suddenly Mistress Padmé let out a choking sound and fell! I never knew why. Maybe she was surprised, Mistress Leia? I certainly was. Master Ani was never angry with her! It was a horrible, horrible experience, Mistress Leia, especially when Master Obi-Wan fought against Master Ani, and then Master Ani lost his limbs and screamed and burnt, but then we had to leave him there by Master Obi-Wan's order, although then Artoo was with me again, and I hate to say it because he is going to be insufferably smug after this, but I was glad he was there again beside me in such a terrible event. We then flew to…"

` _Master Ani – Anakin killed the Jedi –_ _ **Father**_ _killed_ _ **all**_ _the Jedi._ `

A lump formed in her throat on that notion.

` _Mistress Padmé –_ _ **Mother**_ _–_ _ **choked**_ _and then_ _ **fell**_ _, but why?_ `

A deep, deep chill settled in her chest. Something _horrible_ had happened to her mother, she knew, by the odd intuition that had never served her wrong all this time; but _what_?

` _He was so_ _ **angry**_ _with_ _ **her**_ _? Why?_ `

Because of " _Master Obi-Wan?_ " But who was that person? An enemy of his father's?

And… and… ` _Lost_ _ **limbs**_ _… screamed…_ _ **burnt**_ `! Her _father_ –! And then everybody else just _left_?!

She had forgotten that droids, however sentient-seeming they were, didn't understand about real emotions or tact.

Her hands found her face and clutched at it, as she hunched into herself, with her elbows resting heavily on her knees. But the acute dizziness and nausea that were assaulting her now didn't stem from Threepio's ongoing rambling. She wasn't even aware of what the droid said next; the words just bounced hollowly inside her head.

She was too preoccupied with one conclusion that was ramming at her mind again and again with vicious relentlessness: Her hunch about something horrible in her mother's past seemed to have been proven correct, and something even darker than Threepio's chillingly matter-of-fact recounting seemed to lie underneath the surface. She did not know how much and how long she could take in such horrible knowledge, such terrifying truth. Even now her stomach was already rebelling, wanting to expel her dinner, and her body was bathed in cold sweat, while her mind shrieked with horror, grief and denial.

But what to do otherwise? Ignorance would not save her, only harm her further in the long run.

She knew that, logically, but logic didn't – _couldn't_ – work now. She was now _alone_ and she could not take it _alone_!

But if she didn't try now, who knew when she would have the chance again to prove any part of Threepio's rambling as true or otherwise? Captain Antilles had let her come here by sheer lucky coincidence, and he had never meant her to visit this specific craft anyhow; he would have other excuses to bar her from here later. She would also be swept away by the messy business of politics and government on behalf of her deceased adoptive parents, making the point moot.

Still, the prospect of more detailed, more tangible proof of Threepio's words petrified her for a long moment. Only by sheer determination did she go past the petrification, the same sheer determination that made her stand up and move away back into the main bulk of the spaceship, trailed faithfully by her two droid friends.

It lasted until she reached the main cabin, the place which was, as Threepio said and Artoo confirmed, where her mother had slept during her voyages. In the wardrobe she found small-sized woman's clothes, and a few others of a much larger size for a man.

And tucked into the very back of the large wooden construct, she found a section dedicated entirely to baby's clothes, blankets and other paraphernalia, done in neutral colours, as if it had been a hopeful secret, and her parents had not known the gender of the baby yet, let alone that there had been two of them.

All those things could have been hers and Luke's when they had been born, would have been theirs if circumstances hadn't conspired against them all, if her mother's plan for them all to run away as a family had not been foiled.

She would have still had her parents and brother, then, not clothes – reminders of a dashed hope – only.

The pain was immense, the breakdown inevitable.

Even sheer determination could no longer support her now, as she sank on the durasteel floor, gasping and gagging on a scream that would not let out, face contorting around tears that would not fall, hands nearly tearing a small yellow baby one-piece apart in their death-grip.

But mentally, she _howled_.

End Notes:  
Credits: Fialleril came up with the "Star Wars" meanings of "Luke" and "Leia" in Nubian and the slave-tongue, plus the assorted stories. Malicean pointed out that "Luke" can mean "light" and Leia "female ruler" (i.e. "princess") in "real life," too. The name "Luléa" featured in this chapter is one I cobbled together from those meanings and shoehorned it into Rey-verse Nubian spelling and pronunciation. So "Luléa" can mean either "Light Princess" in Nubian, or "Free Warrior" in the slave-tongue.  
Footnotes:  
*(1) If Leia knew much more about the senators, she would ask about a particular senator who looked too much like her, _and_ demanded to be a senator as soon as possible just like her look-alike, and a determined Leia is a force to be reckoned with… Bail wouldn't chance that, at least in this time, and he never got to rectify that when she's, say, fifteen and less likely to spill things accidentally.  
*(2) A security feature, in Rey-verse: Different names and different colours every so often could only help to confuse the enemies, though it unfortunately also has the side-effect of confusing the allies.


	5. Unplanned, Part 3

The Sky Walkers  
by Rey

5\. Unplanned, Part 3

Clothes, only clothes, only _things_.

No mother, no father, no brother. Only _things_.

Too late, by far.

Nobody.

 _Alone_.

It felt so cold…

Longing and grief, desperate and poignant, raw and wild, drowned and sucked away any sane thought, any sense of self, with one powerful blow. "Leia" was no longer there, let alone Leia Skywalker or Leia Organa.

The only presence left was pain: deep, overwhelming, unfettered.

Deep, but hollow: horribly, achingly, crushingly hollow.

Hollow. Empty. Nobody was there, not anymore, and she acutely _knew_ that now. Nobody  *(1)answered. Nobody knew. Nobody cared.

There had been four. There was only one now.

Nobody else.

 _A_ _lone._

So chilling. So empty.

Painful, cold, crushing.

But she couldn't escape.

She couldn't escape her own self.

She didn't know how long it lasted, where she was, who she was, let alone what she was supposed to do, where she was supposed to be.

All that she knew was three broken ties mocking her with what could have been, what could have happened, what might have happened.

And then, suddenly, a far-more-intense, far-darker chill invaded her mind, her whole body, her whole being; another powerful blow to her already-battered psyche, jerking her harshly back to reality.

She screamed, jerked, flail, tried to flee.

But it was too late.

Something else, something intangible, a barricade of icy black flames on her perception, wrapped her tightly, securely, like a perverse blanket, screaming a jumbled-but-powerful mess of _anger-recognision-surprise-confusion-pain-denial-conviction-disgust-hatred_ loudly into her mind.

She thrashed, but to no avail. She could not flee, just like before.

The burning chill wrapped her tighter in it, choking her, scorching her, crooning _contempt-satisfaction-glee-anticipation_ with relish.

But, oddly, inexplicably, something within that icy black flames, something _deep_ within, felt somehow _right_ , _familiar_ , on a fundamental level.

She recoiled away instinctively from the realisation, from the strange, unexpected touch of familiarity. ` _Wrong_!` the tiny sliver of her sense of self still working interjected vehemently, in full denial. How could she relate to any part of this _thing_?

But the primal part of her could not deny it, not to herself, not unless she would like to deny her own existence somehow. And all the same, before whatever left of her sense of self could react to the presence and its invasion, her primal instinct already responded viscerally to it, screaming out _home-home-home-home!_

The sense matched her painful longing all too well.

And oddly, shockingly, quite unexpectedly, the impregnable wall of cruel, relentless icy black flames jerked away from her at that instant, howling _pain-pain-pain-pain-grief-longing-hollow-alone-pain-pain-pain-pain_ as if in response to her heart's declaration, as if in the very same denial that she had been experiencing.

She used the distraction to curl up into herself, stiffly and painfully, then pushed herself up into the semblence of a sitting position. Blinking rapidly both to get rid of the moisture in her eyes and to orient her sight past the thick, wild, roaring icy black flames, she looked into the centre of the thing.

A sliver of vivid red light captured her attention in an instant, so incongruous against the backdrop of pure black, yet so _right_ when paired together.

The loud, rhythmic sound of a respirator drew her attention next, totally out-of-place in… wherever this was. It tied to the former, somehow, in a way almost as fundamental as her sense of home was to… whatever it was.

She shifted, sitting up straighter, bracing herself against a vertical surface that her mind dimly recognised as a door of some sort.

The red light moved much closer to her, as if trying to threaten her with its mere presence and proximity to her head. It wavered noticeably though, as if… reluctant? Hesitant?

The icy black flames, swarming all around her again, yelling _danger-confusion-hollow-pain-longing-fear-distrust-grief_ , convinced her all the more that the _thing_ somehow daren't harm her, or maybe not yet. But _why_?

She blinked again, forced her mind to work, forced the sight of surging-and-roiling tongues of black fire surrounding the shaft of red light away, out of her focus of concentration.

And then, she _saw_ it.

Odd black one-piece suit, odd black helmet, odd chest panel with blinking lights.

A huge, hulking, menacing figure so unsuitable and yet somehow so _right_ to be in _this_ bedroom.

This bedroom…

Recent memories began to trickle into her consciousness, shoving the much-older ones aside, dulling the hollow ache in her chest, sharpening her mind. Leia, she was Leia, born – no no, _brought_ – to Alderaan, and she had been wanting to visit the hangar, to visit one of the only physical inheritance left by her birth mother, to know more about the identity she was denied – _lied to_ – from birth. And then Winter… Captain Antilles…

 _Darth Vader._

A sudden, acute feeling of nausea punched into her stomach, then up her chest, forcing itself past her throat and into her mouth.

Winter… Captain Antilles… Darth Vader…

If Darth Vader was here with her, then Winter and Captain Antilles…?

She gagged. A new sort of cold numbness assaulted her.

Winter _and_ Captain Antilles–!

She wanted to ask – to demand their whereabouts and state of being, even better – but she was afraid to open her mouth, afraid that the nausea roiling in her stomach at present would be transformed into something much more severe.

But her uninvited guest, despite his own churning emotions visible even to her befuddled state of mind, had no such barrier.

And, it seemed, no hindrance to his power as well, for in a moment Leia found herself dangling on thin air, supported and surrounded only by the black flames.

"Who are you?"

She should be frightened by the aggressive snarl, maybe, especially when it was all too soon followed by the red light resting _so close_ in-between her left shoulder and neck, radiating heat and menace, while one of the tongues of the black fire was wrapped round her neck in a chokehold. She ought to struggle perhaps, to show her displeasure of being dangled up like meat for sale or a plaything.

But the sense was still there, all too distracting, all too _intoxicating_ , all too familiar, too aching to contemplate, let alone to utter. _Home-home-home-home!_

Unexpectedly though, while the chokehold round her neck tightened, and she struggled at last by reflex, the black flames roiled in increasing agitation, in increasing… fear?

"Who are you?!" the synthetic male voice thundered again, and she could _feel_ its owner glaring at her from behind those droid-like mask, but she could also feel how _anguished_ the words were underneath the bluster.

She could almost taste it.

And somehow, to her own bemusement and horror, she didn't mind the emotion.

It felt… right. She felt like they were mirrors to each other now, and it felt _right_.

Her vision began to tunnel, and she began to gag again, this time because of the tightening tongue of flame round her neck, but her basest thought process refused to register that she was in danger of death. _Home-home-home-home!_ it screams, and all parts of her totally agreed with it.

She had gone mad, maybe, but it did feel _right_.

She smiled at the thought, gave a short delirious chuckle, hiccupping round the chokehold, round her own hysterical tears. She had gone mad, but she was at least home now, and she could register it clearly, before the last dregs of her sanity left her.

Oddly though, right after she acknowledged the feeling, the fog shrouding her mind, the result of two powerful blows to her psyche, slowly dissipated, followed by the chokehold.

And with that, the more recent, more detailed memories began to seep in.

Sneaking away from the small speeder.

The cockpit.

Threepio's explanation…

"… _Master Ani… screamed… fought… burnt… left…"_

They had left _him_ – left him _burning alive_! _Him_ –!

But with that thought, the chokehold returned, as fast as lightning, much more viciously than before.

"Who are you!"

The flames _shimmered_ into a wall of icy heat. _Fury_. So much fury.

If she could shrink away, she would.

Then again, if she could answer, she would. She wasn't sure that she could, even if she wasn't choking and gagging so much.

She didn't know the answer to that, herself. Who was she? Leia Naberrie? Leia Skywalker? Leia Organa?

"Tell. _Me!_ "

She struggled to free one hand from the threatening cocoon of icy black flames, then waved vaguely at her throat.

Everything was undone. Nothing was worth living for anymore. Nobody was there to live for, after all. She could tell, now. She didn't mind dying. She'd see her parents soon, after all, and her brother too if he's dead too. But Darth Vader was asking a question, in his own unimitable manner, and she didn't want collateral loss of life if she didn't manage to answer him before her death.

And he obliged.

The chokehold loosened up a little, just enough for her to draw wheezy breaths and whisper her answer, should she wish.

So she did. "Leia." Nobody else. Just Leia. Everybody else were dead. No Naberrie, no Skywalker, no Organa.

The flames _trembled_.

"Your parents?"

Odd question. But she must answer, or other people might – _would_ – die because of her silence. She didn't want that. Other families mustn't be torn up, especially because of her.

"Promise me," she croaked, turning pleading eyes right at the impassive eye-lenses across from her. "Don't kill other people related to me, if there are any, after I'm dead."

"Your _parents_?"

The icy black flames roiled faster than ever, even more agitated than before, even more… apprehensive. But it was a great change from the wall of fury that had frightened her so much. She could deal with this. She didn't mind this one.

She hadn't expected him to promise her anything too. At least she had tried.

"Padmé Naberrie." It was what her adoptive father had told her, after all, the lone surity amidst conjectures. Droid memories were easier to tamper with, she told herself. She–

"And Anakin Skywalker?"

The flames snapped back into a solid wall, encasing her in a tight blanket of burning ice. Fury radiated from it once more, but now also pain – the sheer mind-numbing agony that she had experienced before, actually.

Mirror, indeed.

"My droid friends told me so."

The icy heat _crushed_ her.

She knew no more.

End Notes:  
Footnote: *(1) Leia didn't know of the Force consciously, but here she had been pushed into the deepest part of her self, where instincts lay. The Force is on an instinctive level for those sensitive to it, even the untrained ones.  
Credit: I borrowed the manifestation of Vader's Force power from Malicean's work, "Welcome to the Club." I doubt my interpretation matched the original thing though.  
Author's Notes: A belated Happy New year for us all. Apologies for such a gloomsome chapter in the beginning of the year, and I do hope the new year is _much_ , much more better than what my muse decided to write for this chapter. And thank you all so, so, so, so much for reading, and for the reviews and follows and favs! So many of them, and most of the comments have been quite thought-provoking as well, which have been delighting me to no end. When I posted this story, I thought I'd only get a few hundred reads at most for the entire thing, let alone anything more tangible…


	6. Father

The Sky Walkers  
By Rey

6\. father

 _`NO!`_

Mental, physical. Horror, terror, self-anger, self-hatred.

Not her own, no, not her own. Leia herself could feel nothing but pain. But at least she was still Leia, still able to think, though barely lucid.

 _Something_ had saved her from the worst of the force that had sought to crush her, but the reflective effort had made her feel as if she had been running for tens of miles up  *(1)Mount Eyal. It had left her steeped deeply in a strange sort of clammy cold too, and she would have shuddered continuously if she could.

The black icy flames, they were still there, roaring high, wreaking havoc with everything, now screaming _betrayal-anger-hatred-pain-grief-betrayal-pain-grief-horror-loss-betrayal-hatred-anger-pain_ , but at least no longer blasting out like a star gone supernova any longer. She doubted any part of the ship was intact – yes, yes, it was a ship, her _mother's_ ship, she remembered now – but at least… but at least…

But at least _what_?

Elusive. She didn't know what she was feeling. Or maybe, she was just shying away from it, just like she had been doing with thoughts of Alderaan's future these two days.

Alderaan… Captain Antilles… Winter… She must _know_.

She shifted, tried to sit up. But when had she fallen sprawled onto the floor like this? She had been upright had she not? Though not necessarily on her own two feet…

Her throat tightened up with remembered pain, with remembered primal terror of her inability to breathe, her inability to move.

The black icy flame abruptly stilled, then surged towards her like an oncoming wave on the shore of a beach, tantalised and fed by her fear somehow. She whimpered. Couldn't move, couldn't run away, couldn't fight either.

They enveloped her, swallowed her whole, steadied themselves with her as the anchor somehow, now exuding _relief-regret -concern-curiosity_.

And they were not so icy anymore, either.

She was… baffled.

Something fell crumpling quite nearby, creating a thudding noise and slight reverberation on the floor.

` _A daughter_ ,` she heard someone whisper; male, a man, grief-stricken, horror-ridden, but reverent, timidly hopeful. Was she hearing it with her ears? Or in her mind? Or both? And who was that? Whom were the words for? She didn't know. She didn't know anything anymore.

Then her ears registered _it_ : the unnerving sound made to imitate breathing, _quite close_.

Darth Vader. The one who had choked her.

The one who had asked – no, _demanded_ – her about her mother and father.

And she had answered.

A different kind of pain burnt her insides, leeching away the shreds of energy that had enabled her to made even the slightest shift. She had screwed her eyes shut tight during the blast of whatever it was, both in pain of the crushing force and in fear of so much power wildly turned loose, but now her eyelids felt laden with durasteel, just like her bones and muscles.

Her father – no, her adoptive father – had sternly reminded her _not_ to tell anyone about her birth mother's name, even moments before he had died, but days later she had told _Darth Vader_ her mother's name _and_ that of her father too.

Maybe it was also why she had never been mandated to take up the mantle of queen? Her adoptive mother had been crowned on the same age after all; but–

But Darth Vader was _home_ somehow. He had the right to know, just as she had the same right.

Something _physical_ ghosted over the side of her neck. Acute horror, self-revulsion, self-anger and self-hatred not of her own blazed on the verge of yet another blast of uncontrolled power.

` _A daughter._ ` The same man's voice _trembled_ with wet hysteria; something _totally_ unexpected when it came to him, a part of her mind supplied, the same part that told her she _knew_ him _intimately_.

` _My daughter._ ` She could definitely heard the stifled beginning of a sob now, accompanied by the nearly-physical feeling of self-condemnation, superimposed on the eerie mirror sight of bruises encircling her neck. A synical part of her sneered at his weakness, weakness from a man whom the same part of her cast as quite powerful; yet the deepest kernel of her being, buried and defended by all others, delightedly welcomed the same weakness, claiming it – _him_ – as _hers_.

But _who_ was he in truth? Her mind couldn't help demand it, amidst all the confusion and pain and conflicting feelings.

Or was she just shying away from the blatant fact again?

The eerie breathing sound that always accompanied Darth Vader, she couldn't close herself from such distraction.

She told herself that, at least.

At first, at least.

Then: Darth Vader… so near… and the horrified, grieving man had been _quite_ near, she somehow _knew_ that… and the physical something that had just touched her neck…

They… they… they–!

Wet heavy heat gathered behind her eyelids. Darth Vader… the man… daughter… _daughter–_!

 _No!_ Couldn't be. Mustn't be.

The wet heavy heat squeezed her eyes mercilessly. Her throat tightened up again, but now the black not-so-icy-anymore flames were not the culprit.

 _Daughter!_

Father…

Anakin Skywalker?

 _Darth Vader–!_

 _No!_ Couldn't be. Mustn't be.

But… but… but…

Black flames wrapped round her again, but like a warm cocoon now, with the strength of beyond space-worthy durasteel. Body and limbs made up of metal plates and leather and some silky thick garment did the same physically.

Darth Vader? Anakin Skywalker?

No.

Father.

One-third of the link, it was complete now.

No delight. No satisfaction. Just _there_.

 _There_. Home.

Home, for a little while. Home, in spite of everything.

She didn't fight it. She didn't fight her tears either, when they at last slid down her cheeks, baptising the crook of leather-clad elbow, the nook made _just_ for her, her and the other half of her that was still missing.

End Notes:  
Footnote: *(1) I didn't find the name for the tallest point on Alderaan on Wookieepedia, so I made it up.


	7. Definition

The Sky Walkers  
By Rey

Author's notes: Beware of confusion of address and thinking. Those are indeed the main ingredients of this chapter, unavoidable. And before you pick up your blaster canons at me for some irritation bound to happen in the selfsame chapter regarding a certain Captain Antilles, readers, please read the chapter notes at the end. Thank you.

Chapter 7: Definition

In her wildest imagination, and even in her worst nightmare, Leia had never _ever_ conceived the notion of being _held_ by Darth Vader _other than_ by her throat. But now she was _cradled_ in _layers_ of his being: fenced inside by his hard large arms, pressed right against his not-so-hard midriff, practically swaddled by his heavy sleek cape, _and_ shrouded by a fierce _impenetrable_ wall of black warm flames that crooned _mine-mine-mine-mine-protect-care-legacy_. She felt like a… like a… well, like a child, really, or like a cherished rare treasure. She couldn't decide if she liked it or not.

She couldn't, because her tears hadn't even fully abated, when somewhere near her ears something that was most likely a commlink let out a quiet beeping noise, from the direction of Vader's – _Father's?_ – beltside.

The black warm flames spiked with cold irritation, before one tendral reached out and yanked the offending object viciously from its resting place. "Admiral Finay," the deep synthesised voice snapped. The hostile vexation thickened, surging ferociously.

Leia shivered, gulping and gasping back her tears as quietly and quickly as she could. She wished she could shrink away from the harsh cold flames and the reach of his fence-like arms, too.

But the arms cradled her closer instead, and one hhuge hand even snaked up to her head, covering it, as if in an act of protection or afection, just as the part of the flames closest to her turned warmer and crooned _Safe. No worries. Safe. Here. Mine._ `

It's all _subconscious_ at that, she _knew_ , somehow, and it… stretched her credulity to its fullest.

Still, only one thought passed through her mind – ` _His hands aren't on the commlink! – Silly. Why does he choose to hold me instead? The commlink needs him._ ` – before the unnerved-sounding admiral on the other end spoke cautiously, "The Emperor wishes to speak with you presently, my lord. Shall I route the channel to your commlink, my lord?"

` _The Emperor!_ ` her mind shrieked, automatically apprehensive, then stuttered to a petrified halt for a moment. Raised in the environment that didn't see the Emperor – and his second-in-command – quite in a good light made her feel unnerved at the "Yes, Admiral" growled out by… Vader? Her father?

 _No no, you're safe, you're safe,_ the flames, remaining warm when in contact with her own presence, regardless of their far-colder brethren on the outside, crooned again. A promise, she _knew_ , a _subconscious_ promise, by _her father_.

Still, however warm and heartening the promise felt, she was gladder that for now she was concealed by three layers of protection when the Emperor's voice, scratchy and calmly menacing, at last sounded on the comlink. "Lord Vader, have you dealt with the Force user?"

"Yes, my master," the voice synthesiser replied in a matter-of-fact, clipped tone. The black flames, meanwhile, danced in two shades of glee: far darker on the outside, and far lighter on the inside.

With different causes, too.

"Who was it, my friend? And how did you deal with it? I find myself… interested." The Emperor's purring tone took a darker, more suspicious hint. "Was it one of your Jedi… _friends_?" Leia shivered, her hair on end.

Contempt flooded _all_ the layers of flames cocooning her, cold and vicious. Leia shivered harder, though instinctively she _knew_ that it wasn't directed towards her. "I have no Jedi _friend_ , my master." It was pure Darth Vader speaking now, she _knew_ , not her father, no.

Somehow, even in such a short time since they'd met, she longed for the latter.

And somehow, even though their meeting had been indirect and unwitting on the part of the Emperor, she hoped she would _never_ see him personally in life, especially when the old man then countered with a slow, easy reply of: "Make sure of that, Lord Vader, and make sure also that such a _powerful_ opponent is truly _and_ properly dealt with. Otherwise, I will be… _displeased_."

Worse, Father – _Vader!_ – replied with nearly a similar tone: "The Force user was untrained, despite his raw power. I bested him quite easily. He did not offer me _any_ challenge whatsoever, my master."

She _almost_ sought to break free from him, ran away and never looked back, there and then, despite all her current limitations. Almost, but then the Emperor terminated the conversation, and the air turned mercifully silent, less charged.

That was, until, with a sudden, _far more savage_ yank by one tendral of _icy_ flame, the comlink broke into pieces somewhere against the bulkhead opposite them.

If that were a _person_!

Her mind recoiled. But her body, trapped in _his_ arms and a length of _his_ cloak, could barely quiver with the urge.

Still, the black flames, with much of the negative emotions bled out via that one act of violence, crooned with relieved satisfaction, _Safe, safe; mine, safe, concealed, safe, mine, no other's_.

It just made it harder for her to break away, though not that Vader? Father? Let it happen in the first place. Even as he fluidly got up to his feet, she was still securely cocooned and nestled in his arms like an infant, with the almost-happy black flames – _his_ flames? – doing both at once to her on the– less-visible level.

He took a step forward.

The door slid open at the same time, preceeded by an unsourced warning of impending violence from another familiar someone.

She truly thrashed about now, panicked. The distraction cost her captor – Father? Vader? – a split of second.

"Vader." Captain Antilles, angry and anxious, snarling at _him_. "Let her go!"

"NO!" she shrieked, automatically; maybe to deny the demand, maybe to prevent the black flames, blazing high and harsh with offence, from reaching out at the reckless man and treating him like the commlink from earlier, maybe both, but _she didn't care_. "No, don't!"

Something broke into pieces against the bulkhead, but _thankfully_ not Captain Antilles. Leia subsided, shivering, feeling like crying again, just moments after her earlier bout had ended, or so it felt. Physical and mental exhaustion impinged on the edges of her mind, but she fought it with vicious determination. Winter and the captain were the only constants left from her old life now; she wasn't about to let _any of them_ hurt – or _die_ – and especially not _by_ _ **his**_ _hand_.

"Captain Antilles," she addressed the man, with slightly-quavering voice, from her perch on the bulky mass of durasteel and leather and sleek heavy fabric. Calm, calm, she told herself. At least the furious, reckless, protective man, who must have checked the tiny speeder and noticed her missing, was still breathing, though apparently silenced by some means, and held in the lethal embrace of the flames that she had tasted earlier, before… before… before _that_.

Calm, calm, she tried to convince herself, even as she attempted to find a more comfortable seat in _his_ arms, and meanwhile tried to ignore how she _subconsciously_ snuggled against the side of the ever-blinking control panel on _his_ chest. Calm, calm, and maybe both men wouldn't be killing each other in the next moment. "Captain Antilles, I'm sorry. I… I wanted to come here. I wanted to see… to… my mother…"

` _She fell –_ _ **He**_ _must've choked_ _ **her**_ _! Like he did me just now…_ ` a part of her mind shrieked, resounding with undeniable truth, as her train of thoughts – and thus her words – stuttered to a premature stop. Her perch flinched, black flames distracted from their captive and blazing now with old enduring agony and misery.

Agony and misery that she also shared, as her thoughts and emotions whirled in an endless loop of: ` _He lives,_ ` and ` _He is my mother's husband,_ ` and ` _He is my father,_ ` and ` _He_ _ **choked**_ _my mother,_ ` and _`He_ _ **also**_ _choked me just now._ `

What a family…

"Your… _mother_ , Princess?"

Odd, that, similar to… Father? Vader?… Captain Antilles could utilise a lethal whisper that masks dread pretty well.

But what should he dread from an abcent – _most likely dead_ – senator? And was it a ring of familiarity that she heard in his voice?

Slowly but surely, in her quest for understanding, Leia began to immerse herself deeper and deeper in her own past, ignoring the present. She went deeper, deeper, deeper…

To an inexplicable but poignant sense of loss that was barely sated – but at least quenched _a little_ – when her tiny self lay in the arms that her primal sense of being termed as "quite familiar but not parent," to the hidden sense of melancholy that she got from him whenever she addressed the man as "Captain Antilles," to the baffling sliver of possessiveness whenever her father – no, her _adoptive_ father – felt against the other man whenever one had to interact with the other with her in tow, to the short times _stolen_ among his busy duties _outside of the palace_ when _her adoptive father wasn't around_ to teach her how to use a blaster, how to play bouncing ball with a club against the wall when there's nobody to play with her, how to steer a speeder…

"Uncle Ray," she'd called him, for some reason, in her earliest memory, though in the interfening time she had somehow stopped calling him that. When she'd grown older, she'd changed to "Cousin Ray," owing to her supposed relation to him on the Antilles side; and then their hectic lives had separated them, making him just "Captain Antilles" to her lately.

"Who are you?" she whispered, almost to herself, unknowingly cutting off the addressee's hostile remark at her father, a response to something that she hadn't paid attention to.

"What?" Captain Antilles stuttered to a stop.

She looked at him dead on, concentrating, feeling again the sense of almost-family that she'd felt during her earliest memory. "Who are you?" she repeated softly; wistful, bemused, curious.

She could tell that both men, postures stiff and somehow territorially possessive, were taken aback by the apparent non sequitur, but _she didn't care_. "Who are you to Padmé, my mother?"

The gobsmacked, wretched look on the usually-composed – genteel, even – man was _quite telling_.

"You… never told me," she breathed, as her world tilted out of orbit _yet again_ , as she cowered deeper in _her father's_ arms in a futile attempt to flee from the quiet something that whispered into her mind: ` _He knows your mother. He's been knowing your mother, and he never told you_.`

Flames erupted from her own being, entangling with those of her father's, feeding and feeding off each other, whirling in a vicious circle of loss and pain and grief and anger and betrayal.

"Leia." – Uncle Ray? Cousin Ray? Captain Antilles? – 'Lay-yah', not 'Lay-yuh', not 'Lee-yah', not 'Lee-yuh', unlike how other people usually pronounced her name, she noticed only now, but _why?_ – and why did he have to be so _kriffing_ helpless and _pained_ and _wretched_? He had _no right_ to feel so!

A sob tore out of her chest, constricting her airway; and with that, the flames – _her_ flames – collapsed back into herself, leaving her cold and hollow and miserable.

She buried her face against her father's helmet-covered neck, and with another wretched sob, her tears fell again.

End NOtes:  
AU points:  
In Rey-verse, Padmé's guards, especially her handmaidens and personal bodyguards, weren't just there for the duty; they're like family. And in Rey-verse too, Raymus Antilles wasn't raised on Alderaan. Long story short, he and Padmé met as kids and grew close.  
In Rey-verse, there are also a few changes on the structure and history surrounding the seat of monarch on Alderaan, as stated in the story notes, among which are:  
1. The dispute of ascendency is not on the level of Breha and Bail Organa, but one above them.  
2. In Rey-verse, Bail Antilles is Breha's elder brother, not her father.  
3. Following that point, Raymus Antilles is not Breha's younger brother, but still Bail's son, hence Breha's nephew, and Leia's supposed cousin – first cousin, to be exact.  
4. The name "Organa," in Rey-verse, acts like the name "Winsor" for British ruling House.  
5. Following the previous point, Bail _Organa_ , with the argument that he is only the _viceroy_ , not the _king_ and hence not of the ruling House originally, is not an Organa before his marriage to Breha, but Alde, one of the founding Houses of Alderaan; this way, Bail's mother isn't the Queen, like in Wookieepedia.  
Author's notes: I won't expand further here… Snippets in the story later on (or in other stories, maybe), but these changes are indeed part of my headcanon for Star Wars, so I will use them often.


	8. Tug of War

The Sky Walkers  
By Rey

8\. Tug of War

"Leia." A prayer? A plea? An urge?

` _Leia._ ` Possessive, protective, jealous.

Two grown men, powerful on their own rights and fiercely territorial, demanded her attention. But Leia herself could say nothing, could do nothing to refute one or the other, despite her current position favouring her father.

"Leia." There was a deep, genuine regret there, in the captain's… _no_ , _Uncle Ray's_ faintly trembling voice, regret of twelve years lost. Whoever her mother had been to the man, Capt… Uncle Ray did not view her simply as the extention of her mother, just… _Leia_.

` _Leia_.` Fear, palpable fear, she could practically taste it now, flowing thick and sickening from her father; fear of her abandoning him for another, despite the fact that she was still snuggled in his arms. Too proud yet to beg, too hesitant yet somehow to remove himself and her from the vicinity, but it was a near thing. Regret was there as well, of twelve years stolen. Regret which was steadily turning into determination that he was not going to waste more time, even if he had to sequester her somewhere remote…

But she wanted _both_ , and she couldn't get _both_ if her father spirited her away.

She shifted, wriggling a little. Tired, shaky hands wiped at swollen eyes and wet cheeks. She shifted again, but the arms round her refused to budge.

"Let me go," she croaked. "Please," she added almost as an afterthought.

But he didn't. Black fire roared with the strength of the fear instead, and reached out to kick the other man out, to eliminate the rival, the threat. ` _No!_ `

"No!" It was her turn to feel afraid now, to feel desperate, though not of abandonment.

She hated being caged.

And there was also the _very real_ possibility of Capt… Uncle Ray being _crushed_ like a bug, regardless of whatever his relation to her birth parents had been in the past.

The wild, fearsome power halted on its way.

But she didn't take into account the latter man's equal stubbornness, as he apparently regained his bearing for just one purpose. "She is not yours. Let her go, please, Lord Vader." Firm, demanding, just half a tone away from insolence, trying to mask – and perhaps also to tamp down – the dread of helplessness and, ironically, the same fear of separation.

With that, the tall man flew across the corridor outside, smack against the bulkhead opposite the door. And for that, Leia kicked the leather-encased belly of her captor. "You hurt him! Let me go!"

Whatever her father would do to her for that stunt, or for that demand, was postponed, for her droid friends, who had been forgotten in all the turmoil so far, came racing down the corridor. "Captain Antilles!" she could hear Threepio's fussy exclamation a long moment before the droid's golden frame appeared at the door. Artoo's nervous crooning could be faintly discerned farther away.

Allies.

"Artoo!" she implored. "Help!" But her father chose just that moment to shift his hold on her to a horizontal position, pinning her arms and legs flush against his armoured body, turning her face into the crook of his arm, and covering her with his thick cape, so all that she could let out next were just muffled noises.

Her fear grew.

Artoo had apparently arrived and taken in the entirety of the _very, very odd_ scene, for he let out a shocked blat. Then, as expected with how she was effectively hidden from his visual sensors, he wondered aloud about where his Mistress Leia was.

The fear turned into desperate frustration.

` _Artoo!_ ` she wailed. ` _Uncle Ray! Let me go – I'm not going anywhere!_ `

Deep-seated pain churned the fear fuelling the black flames, thick with pangs of betrayal and loss. ` _Anakin,_ _you're breaking my heart. I'll never stop loving you, but you are going down_ _a path I can't follow_ _,_ ` echoed from the past, she knew; an echo from her mother, she knew, wreathed in love and pain and loss and fire and anger and betrayal.

And then, she was dropped onto the floor, gentler than she had expected, gentler than what he had done to her mother those years ago, just as the black flames churned wilder with agony and rage and creeping apathy. She wasn't sent flying across the corridor, but neither was she kept near like before.

For the first time in their meeting, since even before he had known that she was his daughter, her father had retracted his presence fully from her.

It was a worse – _far worse_ – feeling than being choked by him.

She wanted _both_ men in her life. Why must she choose to abandon one and take the other? Her heart was big enough for two, and more; why couldn't they see that?

Or did they _refuse_ to see that?

But they were _grown-ups_! Adults were supposed _not_ to be petty.

She choked back a sob. No, she wasn't going to cry _yet again_. She doubted she would be able to stop herself if she did, that's why, and she had neither the energy nor the luxury to indulge herself right now.

Artoo bumped against her kneeling form with a concerned coo. Choking back yet another sob, she blindly reached out and put her arms round his cylindrical body. "Artoo," she murmured, her voice wobbling dangerously. "Artoo." But what should she say? What could she say? What could Artoo, _a small droid_ , help her with, actually? She had born the brunt of a droid's lack of tact just some time ago; she ought to know that well.

She couldn't think. She felt so hollow, unreal. The man just centimetres away behind her – _her father_ – acted as if she were not there, while the other man at least two metres away, _her uncle_ , groaning and cursing lowly, seemed to be trying to return to the room, on the peril of being a man-sized unfortunate bug.

She felt like a trinket being contended for by children.

But she _wasn't_. She _refused_ to be roped into taking a side.

Nobody was in her side anyway, except perhaps her two droid friends. She suspected she couldn't even depend on Winter. Winter wouldn't understand; Winter hadn't had to choose between kin and kin, given that her birth family had all died before the Empire had been formed, and the Royal Family had adopted her right afterwards.

For a wild moment, driven by desperation and anger at the situation in general, Leia wished their positions had been exchanged. Winter was composed and cool-headed. Winter could argue her way out of a volatile situation without ruffling any temper. Leia? Well, she could _make it worse_ , she well knew that.

Still, she wanted her father _and_ her uncle, and nothing in the galaxy would change that.

"Leia?" Uncle Ray rasped, when the twelve-year-old stumbled past him with the astromech practically welded to her side. But she didn't look at him, nor did she answer him.

Only one thought ran in her mind, one person that might be in her side: Luke. He was her twin, after all. She just had to find him, and explain it all to him.

"Mistress Leia?" Threepio was approaching fast; and given her slow pace, he overtook her just in the next moment. "What are we going to do now, Mistress Leia? Where are you going, Mistress Leia? Shall I ask Captain Antilles and Lord Vader to vacate Mistress Padmé's cabin? She wouldn't want a stranger in her bedroom, after all. And although Captain Antilles has been well known to her, Lord Vadar is not. I would suggest…"

She let the chattery droid's words wash over her, like a strange balm. It didn't fill in the emptiness caused by her father's rejection and her uncle's inconsiderate demands, but at least it soothed the roughest edges.

All the same, as she reseated herself on the pilot's seat and mulled over the chain of events, however painful it was, on her last bid to reconcile the two men, she realised something.

No, _two_ things.

First, Uncle Ray might not know the man behind the fearsome giant black armour.

Second, in all their interactions, especially after the revelation of her parentage, she had never called her father… well, _Father_ ; not even once. No wonder the man felt rejected, and sought to reject her in turn.

She rushed back to the cabin, using the energy that she'd never known she possessed, hoping she wasn't too late yet.

She hadn't expected for her Uncle Ray, the respected captain of the palace guards, to be seated on the edge of the bed on the centre of the wrecked cabin, gawping at the pacing form of her father, as the latter was declaiming demands for _her proper upkeep_ , of all things.

"Father," she greeted the black armoured behemoth, struggling to conceal an inappropriate snort of incredulous laughter.

She flinched, as both men snapped their heads round, staring agape at her. Well, she had been spot-on regarding her oversights, at least, though it didn't make being under such emotionally-charged gazes more bearable.

"Father," she restarted valiantly, nonetheless. One deep breath, two, three… "Uncle Ray didn't know that you're Anakin Skywalker. And–"

"That name has no meaning for me!" Anger, pain, but muted, compared to earlier. Quick denial, too quick.

She flinched again, but arched a small wry smile. "If it had no meaning, you wouldn't deny it so quickly," she pointed out. "You wouldn't be my father too."

The said black armoured behemoth stalked closer to her. Uncle Ray stood up with a groan of pain, but Father was far quicker. In a flash, Leia was dangling in the air once more, this time supported by a pair of large hands set on arms' length. He didn't answer, but the black flames, now swarming round her again, whirled with so many unnamed emotions that pelted her from all sides as if they had physical bodies.

She reeled from the assault, dizzy and lost. But she did know one thing: Her father had been hurt, deeply, and the hurt had been associated with that name*(1).

She wriggled and clawed at the arms keeping her captive until she was back in his embrace. She put her hands on either side of his mask, then, pressing at it, wishing with all her might that she could touch the warm skin beneath, not the cold plasteel, to give her father at least some modicum of comfort, a wordless apology that would be more than mere words.

But judging from how he jerked, she somehow _could_.

She narrowed her eyes in thought, refocused herself, then hugged him round the neck, wishing for the same inexplicable miracle.

His mental voice keened a wordless longing, a wordless loss.

She smiled sadly. Well, whether Anakin Skywalker or Darth Vader, he was _Father_ to her anyway, and it was all that mattered. If she were to regather pieces of her origin and trace her way to Luke, though, the name Anakin Skywalker wasn't to be discarded.

So, with a last squeeze, this time an advance apology for her next words, she picked the earlier topic back up. "Uncle Ray didn't know that you're Anakin Skywalker, so he thought you're going to just kidnap me." ` _Or kill me._ ` "The situation here hasn't been well lately, so we've all been on edge."

Her father flinched on the unspoken bit, but didn't refute the thought. Leia acknowledged it with sad acceptance.

He was far from perfect; the whole situation was far from perfect, far from what her imagination had conjured up, for that matter; but he was _real_ , and he was _hers_ , and they were reunited and reconciled, hopefully for ever.

And as Uncle Rey ventured a tentative "Ani?" she had hope for the two men, too.

Too bad that the reality of the outside world never gave them that chance, not now.

Not now, as the sound of an explosion travelled to their nook of the hangar, originating from the palace.

Both Alderaani shouted "Winter!" even as Darth Vader demanded "What?!" and both men were already sprinting to the ramp before Leia could register that they were moving.

Even more unfortunately, both men, in a strange truce, agreed that she wasn't to return to the palace, and the farther away from it the better.

"But Winter!" she squawked, before her father covered her mouth with one gloved hand, as he took off to the opposite side of the hangar with Threepio and Artoo trailing behind, darting behind the bulks of lonely starships. The sprinting footsteps of Uncle Ray, going right to the palace opposite their trajectory, sounded ominous.

It was deeply ironic, that Darth Vader was now steering the tiny speeder that had been meant to be used to flee from him, but Leia couldn't bring herself to note that point now. All that occupied her mind were: Uncle Ray was _running into danger_ , and Winter was _in danger_.

And a moment after, as the speeder thrust out of the hangar on full throttle, the only thing that registered was: _It was a trap!_

Because it wasn't palace guards that welcomed them, but a rain of green plasma strafed from the hangar's roof.

End Notes:  
Footnote: *(1) Well, "Darth Vader" may be viewed as a slave's name; but Anakin has no additional bad memories and feelings associated with this name, unlike "Anakin Skywalker," aside from the Sithly principle, which I don't think he would follow diligently if that other name doesn't hold that much pain. Under "Anakin Skywalker," he's been a slave too, lost his mother, lost his wife, lost his child, lost his mentor, lost his limbs and breathing ability, regardless of other considerations.  
Argument: Why did Vader just let go of his kid? Well, he let go of his other kid on Bespin in the Original Trilogy… I guess poor Dad doesn't want to repeat what happened with their mother with them, and one betrayal is already one betrayal too many, in his point of view. (Remember, this point and the one above are pretty subjective, regardless of what we think.)  
Author's Notes: Umm… I just can say… sorry? Heheh. And my profuse apologies, especially, to that one reviewer who squawked about me not updating for four months, whom I raged at. Uni-work did drown me for a while there, and then a dreadful spell of writer's block took me. In fact, I'd been struggling with this chapter for a long while, after a few rewrites, and my super-patient beta-reader Malicean got the brunt of my whinging and fretting and general indecision, before I at last figuratively sat myself down and told myself not to leave the doc file until it's full, today. I hope you aren't terribly disappointed. And sorry if it's not coherent at all or riddled with more holes than a Swiss cheese. It's literally fresh from the press, as it's posted minutes away after being written, without any reread, let alone edits. I'll return to this later, promise, though I can't say when I can update next…


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